The Centre for Health Protection urged parents to be on guard for obsessive use of computers and smartphones by their children yesterday as the city sees a big increase in cases of internet addiction among teenagers.
The Non-communicable Disease Watch, a monthly bulletin released by the centre yesterday, quoted a study that suggested more than a quarter of Hong Kong students are addicted to the internet. Internet addiction can cause unhealthy diets, high use of alcohol or tobacco and insomnia, the centre warned.
"Marathon online gaming sessions have even been implicated in causing sudden deaths," the bulletin said. It expected the situation to get worse as smartphones became more popular.
The study quoted was carried out by Polytechnic University in 2011 and headed by Professor Daniel Shek Tan-lei. It found that 26.7 per cent - just over one in four - of 3,500 students interviewed met the criterion of internet addiction.
The Centre for Health Protection said boys were more likely to fall victim than girls. They were more likely to play online games, watch cyberporn and engage in online gambling.
Lee Chin-hei, who is in charge of Christian Service's Online Addiction Counselling Centre, said his team received up to a dozen calls a week from parents seeking help with their children's computer addiction. This was about three times as many calls as two years ago, he said.